CURMUDGUCATION: Bulletins From The Trailing Edge Of The Pandemic
Bulletins From The Trailing Edge Of The Pandemic
If it can work anywhere, it can work here.
I live in a county in NW PA, with relatively small population (50K or so). And our schools are all open.
We have been subject to the same rules as the rest of the state, and like pretty much everything in PA, the folks in charge have made their rules based on Pittsburgh, Philly and Harrisburg. This is Trump country, so plenty of folks are anti-maskers, but we haven't had any of those ugly assaults. I think we benefit from one aspect of small town life-- when you meet that minimum wage worker at the door of the business, you probably already know them. Makes it marginally harder to be a jerk to them.
But mostly we've done well. We have a big branch here of UPMC (the "non-profit" health monolith that is slowly eating the entire state). Since anyone started counting, our total number of positive Covid cases has not yet hit 70, and we've had only one death. We've had many sets of days in a row with no new positives. By the figuring of the state, we are a "green" county, which means restrictions are minimal, but most local businesses remain cautious. And this is the kind of area where it's not unusual to go, say, grocery shopping and encounter only a handful of other people.
So yes. Schools are open. We have four separate districts in the county (more than necessary, but that's a discussion for another day). All are open five out of five, full days. One has switched the high school to block scheduling. All require masks, and various bits of tweaking have been applied to traffic patterns in the buildings. There are barriers, cleaners, new arrangements for lunch and recess.
A non-zero number of families are staying home and selecting from an assortment of distance CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Bulletins From The Trailing Edge Of The Pandemic